Toni Lee Scott has long been known for her iconic jazz vocals, her deeply admirable determination to make the best of this thing called life, and her friendship with the gone too soon James Dean. Her range has won her long standing recognition and praise in the cabaret genre. Over the course of her career she has appeared on such television shows as Steve Allen, Johnny Carson, Tennessee Ernie Ford, and The Mike Douglas Show, just to name a few. Her life story can be found in the autobiography A Kind of Loving. She is currently working on a documentary covering her life as well.

What was it like to meet James Dean?

It was amazing!

What was he like as a person? Do you think society tends to overlook the individual in favor of the fame aspect of his persona.

Written by Jason Kennedy, a second cousin of Marilyn Monroe’s and his wife Jennifer Jean Miller who also wrote Marilyn Monroe & Joe DiMaggio: Love in Japan, Korea, and Beyond, the book Marilyn Monroe Unveiled: A Family History promises to give fans an intimate look at the star as she really was. The 382 page book strives to unravel the myths behind one of America’s most beloved icons.

Did you know you were related to Marilyn growing up?

Jason: Yes, I knew that some family relationship existed growing up according to my father. Due to a divorce and other issues, I was separated from my mother from an early age. In 2011, I found my mother and grandmother, and they explained the exact connection.

Did your grandmother ever speak much of Gladys?

Jason: Yes, my grandmother remembered going over to Gladys’s house and Gladys and Norma Jeane coming over to…

The James Dean Tribute Edition

Founded by Ian Ayres and inspired by Allen Ginsberg, Van Gogh’s Ear: Best World Poetry, Prose & Art is an annual anthology series devoted to publishing powerful works by major voices and innovative new talents from around the globe. The goal of Van Gogh’s Ear is to make each volume a real eye-opener that stirs people’s emotions and ignites their imaginations. Experimental work is warmly embraced. The tenth volume of the series, in honor of the 60th Anniversary of his death and his 85th birthday on February 8, 2016, also humbly offers up a section dedicated with the sincerest of admiration and gratitude to James Dean. The section features interviews with Lew Bracker, Brenda Hayes, Jim Hayes, Val Holley, Mark Kinnaman, Cody Mullins, David Nall, Roy “Oily” Phillips, Denn Pietro, Lee…

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The world was so, so different then in the early 80s. It was still a big adventure for anyone to travel to some remote, odd places and lap up all the feelings at that particular time and place. It’s been over 30 years since that time. And it’s a strange, blurry, even surreal thing — with pictures coming into my head and other things flashing by like, you say, the smell of something, etc. But it really is the mystery of it all that still means the most. I went there, I stayed there, and I’m still here. Memories come back again, be it they are very shadowy … a bit film noir, in fact …

Winslow farm from rear taxi window

‘Oily’ is how I sign my cheques and everybody calls me ‘Oily.’ It came from my messing with Triumph motorbikes as a kid, so it was ‘Royly Oily’ and it…

Steve Rowland has worked as an actor, singer, columnist, and record producer. As an actor he appeared on such television shows The Rifleman, Bonanza, and The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp as well as countless others, and graced the silver screen in the films Crime in the Streets, Battle of the Bulge, Gun Glory, and The Thin Red Line. He was the lead singer of the band The Family Dogg. Steve also appeared in the academy Award Winning documentary Searching for Sugar Man, dealing with the disappearance and re-a merging of the artist known as Rodriguez, due to being producer on his second album, Coming From Reality, the music from which made up half of the film’s sound track. Steve’s work as a producer led…

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What was it like growing up in Indiana when you did? What are some of your most fond memories of that time?

I remember with great fondness being part of the Fairmount High School basketball team. I say part because by the time the season started I had been eliminated from the team. I was definitely not an athlete! However, we had a really great coach and before he cut me from the team, he went up to my Mother’s classroom and told her that it was going to happen. He then asked her how she might feel if he offered me the position of “Student Manager.” (That is the individual who attends every game, hands the players a towel and water during time-outs, and washes their uniforms and jock straps) She said yes and frankly I loved the position. Thinking back, however, I realized this was an additional burden…

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When I was young
I drove to Salinas
And ran through the bean fields
Pretending I was James Dean in East of Eden
Stopped off in Monterey walking Cannery Row
Imagining myself packing sardines in between
Midnight conversations with Doc and the boys

Driving to Carmel I scribbled a poem on a cocktail napkin
That later became the Title for my first book of poems
But the rents were high and the job pay too low
So in 1964 I took my first full time job in Modesto
Driving on weekends to Stockton’s public square park
To drink with the wino’s
In Crow’s Landing I drank with unemployed Mexicans
At run-down cantinas
In North Beach and the Mission District
I hung out with deadbeats and losers
Street people fighting junkie tremors and cirrhosis of the liver
In the Fillmore I cut my teeth on jazz Let…

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Val Holley is author of the books James Dean: The Biography, Mike Connolly and the Manly Art of Hollywood Gossip, and 25th Street Confidential: Drama, Decadence, and Dissipation Along Ogden’s Rowdiest Road.

Can you tell us a little about yourself for those that might not be familiar with you and your work?

I got a bachelor’s degree in journalism, then went to law school–but that was not a match made in heaven. Once, when I was at the library and should have been studying for a Real Property final, instead I was browsing through the Hollywood biographies and found references to James Dean in a Montgomery Clift biography. Immediately I started reading everything about James Dean and determined that there had been no accurate, scholarly biography on him. I decided to step up to the plate and write it myself. I came to feel that writing history…

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Mark Kinnaman is the current vice president of the James Dean Remembered Fan Club as well as an organizer at Back Creek Friends Church in Fairmount, Indiana, and shipping manager at Daddy-0’s.

Can you tell us a little about yourself? Where are you from? What do you love most about that place?

I was raised outside of Frankton ,Indiana just 18 miles from Fairmount in Madison County. I watched East of Eden on a rainy Sunday afternoon in April of 1969. I never had a movie or an actor affect me like that. I was mesmerized from the very first of prowling thru the streets until the very emotional ending. It still affects me every time that I watch it.

When did you first learn of James Dean and his various works? What did it feel like?